Page 122 of Lies He Told Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 1)

Joy. My wife. My love. My loss.

I never got to explain myself to her. Never even tried.

29

Joy

By the time we pull up to the station, my brain is fuzzy. I should’ve eaten more. Probably shouldn’t have run across half the city, either.

My thoughts are paranoid blips. Like how I can’t find signs on the front of this so-called police station. How it looks like some ho-hum office building for a company that produces staplers.

Like how, even if this is all true and valid and not the ravings of my paranoid, hungry, sleepy mind, it doesn’t really matter since there’s nowhere for me to go from here. Nowhere to run.

Calm your crazy, Joy. See, the place has one of those secretaries and everything? And signs … there’s signs in here…

Not that I have any time to get a good look at them. Dryden is shepherding me along as fast as a criminal, getting down to business now. Before I know it, we’re already in an interrogation room.

It’s small and I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be, if that’s a part of the whole ‘Intimidate The Guilty’ strategy. If it is, it’s working.

“So,” the police officer says. “Let’s go.” He opens the door to an interrogation room and gestures for me to sit. The chair is freezing cold against the backs of my thighs. The door clangs shut.

You are dumb and exhausted,I remind myself.Be careful.

Dryden’s eyebrows arrow down into a harsh V. “Let’s begin. Why is there ash on your sneakers?”

“I went to The Skillet.”

His arms crossed across his chest, he nods for me to go on.

“And I saw Gavril there.”

“What was your husband doing?”

“He just …”Inhale, exhale. Just do it. Just say it.It’s the truth, after all. “It … sounded like he killed everyone, then firebombed the place.”

Dryden isn’t taking notes.

“He said that?”

“Basically. He said, ‘I’ve put down what had to be put down.’”

The officer still isn’t taking notes. Then again, I know a grand total of zero about how real police procedure is supposed to go. Still, this feels wrong.

“Okay. Good. That’s good for now. How about you describe your marriage to me?”

I stare at him. “That’s it? You don’t want a statement?”

He waves a hand. “We’ll circle back to that later. First, I need some background info, just to get everything situated. Now, can you confirm if the rumors about you and Gavril are true?”

I keep my gaze even. “Depends what the rumors are.”

A smile on one side of his mouth. “Rumor has it, Gavril paid you to be his wife. The whole thing was arranged.”

I open my mouth, but he keeps going. “Nothing you say has to be released to the public. We only care about putting the man behind bars.”

“Then why do you care about our marriage?”

“We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

---